The post where I eat my words

It looks like I kinda jumped to conclusions with my posts of doom about the death of the 25 man raid.

Benefits of 25-Player raids
Your assumption here is that there is some magic tipping point at which a 10 dude wouldn't feel compelled to run a 25 and a 25 dude wouldn't feel stupid for not running a 10. That number may in fact exist, but it may be very hard to hit. I will tell you that we had to go to a whole tier of gear to make the heroics feel like they were worth doing.

The stereotypical hardcore 25 guild (and I used "stereotypical" specifically because I'm not sure how meaningful it is to try and talk about a typical guild) is very concerned with efficiency. They want to get the final boss killed as quickly as possible and gear up everyone quickly. They feel a sense of accomplishment in doing things quickly. Thus we hope the benefit of gearing up more quickly by doing 25s is enough to keep them doing 25s. (Source)

10-Player Heroic Gear = 25-Player Heroic Gear
Yes. The exact same loot tables, but more rolls on those tables for the larger raids, particularly 25 heroic.

So Blizz wants to keep the 25s alive and will make it more efficient to run as 25s. More loot and better synergy means the competitive hardcore guilds will stay on the 25 track and just downshift to 10s if attendance problems arise.

So, ya. I jumped the gun with fears and paranoia and now I am having to eat my words.

Keys to success in a raiding guild

The most important thing that contributes to a guild downing raid content is competent people behind the computer screen.

The second most important thing that contributes to a guild downing raid content is structure.

If you want to be a competitive guild you need to cultivate and strengthen these two areas and you will succeed. My server, in its infancy had a guild called Genesis that was THE premiere horde guild. They were the top dogs until the guild leader decided to quit the game. He recently came back and started up Genesis again. He did this when the top 10 guilds were solidly into progression in ICC 25. He had nothing and yet while other guilds were struggling to get that one more boss down he took on quality players and got the job done going from nothing to being currently ranked the 3^rd guild on the server.

How does this happen? How can someone come in in the middle of the progression race and get players so good that the guild rockets to the top of the ranks? I feel its because of his recruitment strategy and guild structure. A friend of mine from a previous guild was in Genesis recently and through him I found out that they recruit heavily and use performance as a benchmark as who keeps their spots in the raid or even the guild. (using structure to keep quality people and weed out the non quality ones)

I have also been thinking a lot lately about the new raiding structure in Cata with 10s and 25s having the same loot, and personal raid id's going away. After my blog posts of doom recently about the death of 25 mans, I have come to realize that there are a few reasons a guild would want to run 25s in Cata.

1. It's almost impossible to get all the class buffs you want in a 10 man

2. Perfect raid composition for each boss is also close to impossible with only 10 people to choose from

3. Hybrids with geared offspecs are going to be WAY more wanted for 10s than any dedicated class.

In a 25 man setup you have a lot more wiggle room of what classes you bring because of overlapping buffs and not making someone play a spec they don't like.

Now how do you get the competent people and keep them? You recruit until your raiding ranks are somewhat bloated, 25 to 50% over the bare minimum to raid sounds about right. Then you make them compete with each other for spots. Base your decisions strictly on who can do the least amount of stupid things then who performs the best on the meters IN THAT ORDER.

From there you structure your leadership to clearly define what you want from your members. This could come in the form of guild rules, a strong gm, a very vocal raid leader, or many other possibilities. If the raiders know what is expected of them then they can be brought to raids or sat depending on how well they do those things.

Death of the 25m raid, update

I realize that we are months away from Cata and most stuff isn't set in paper much less in stone, but the info coming out about the direction Blizzard is leaning for raid structure is just getting worse for the 25 man raid environment.

here are the latest quotes:
Amount of gear in 10/25-Man Raids
The amount of gear in the 25 person raids will be roughly equivalent on per-person basis to the 10 person raids. One thing to keep in mind it that we don't plan to allow players to upshift from 10s to 25s, only downshift from 25s to 10s on a given week.

(roughly equivalent on a per person basis. This statement just negates any real incentive to organize 1 25 man group over one or two 10 man groups with the most elite in your guild)

The statements beforehand said that 25person would have more gear per person than 10s, so I wonder if "roughly equivalent" indicates a change in plans, or just not wanting to commit yet to either "exactly the same" or "more".
The number 6 per boss was being mentioned I believe, so slightly more I guess, but anything can change in testing so I wouldn't say that it is set in stone. But we all know you guys won't call us out if anything changes during a beta, right?

So basically there will be no real incentive (gear-wise at least) to run 25 man raids.
There are rewards like badges/gold for the additional coordination involved, but we are trying to avoid having gear be the reason that one style is better than the other.

(what does "badges/gold" mean exactly? I get that you would get more gold in 25s but does badges mean tier badges? Are they implying we will get more for 25s or not? We know that the actual frost/triumph/hero badge system is going away in favor of a point system. By saying they are trying to avoid having gear be the deciding factor it smells like a no to more loot per person in 25s.)

The main reason most competitive guilds run 25s now is because of 2 things: better gear and EPEEN factor of killing the hardest stuff.

The new system takes away having to go to 25s to kill the hardest stuff and get the best gear. The only incentive (as of last week) to do a 25 man raid was the prospect of gearing up faster by 50% per person. If that goes away the only reason you would go to a 25 over a 10 is that you had 25 reliable people who were also amazing at their job.

They just took away all of the incentive while leaving all of the headaches of putting together the bigger raid.

With Blizzard making it possible to downshift your raid from 1x 25 to 3x 10s, and the fact that you can mix and match your 10s if need be, it sounds like Blizzard wants the focus to be on a 10 man raid environment.

Tank in training

In case I haven't mentioned it before I play a DK. When Wrath came out I forsook my druid that I loved playing through vanilla and BC and started with the new hero class. I never looked back. I love playing a DK and I am EXTREMELY lucky that I found a top end raiding guild that would let me play one and raid.

While leveling I was aiming at being a tank. I tanked instances and got me some tank gear. As soon as I hit 80 I got myself in my current guild and they let me know right off the bat that they had plenty of reliable tanks and I would need to dps. That was more than fine with me because dps is fun and not really any pressure other than don't die and perform well.

Other than some 5 mans when the LFD system came out I haven't even off tanked since I was accepted to the guild. I have no idea about specs, theory, gear, rotations, cool downs, placement, movement or anything else related to tanking if it didn't hurt my dps. Even then I only knew about it to the extent that I could use it to eek out a few more points on that dps meter.

Last week I got my 4th 264 offspec token for my tank gear that was sitting in my bank. And when I say tank gear I mean that when anything with defense on it showed up in the loot window I rolled on it. Oh and Heroic Bryntrolls cause its a cool weapon with a cool healing proc that I feel is good for tanking with. So last week I go and fish out everything from my bank that has defense on it and do some research and throw stam gems and tank enchants on all of my stuff. Low and behold I am now WAY over the defense cap, over 40k health, over the mele hit cap, over the expertise cap and with about 30% dodge and 20% parry. This is better than some of the dedicated tank applications we get in the guild.

I figure I will just dive in and try to learn how to be a tank. Hell if things go like I stated in the last post it will be World of Hybrids where if you can do 2 or more jobs with just a change of spec then you will get the spot in the 10 man over that rogue or single spec paladin. Looking to the future, ability to do 2 jobs is way better than being great at one.

Cut to last night, our 25 man raid fell through because we only had 16 people on. Our continuation of the 2 10 man raids fell through because half of each 10 man were the people who didn't log on. (thank you blizz for fixing this in cata, see my last post) So we set up an alt run. I happened to be sick the night we did the 10s so I wasn't saved and they needed a tank. WOOT FOR ME! I get to learn how to tank with people who know I am just new and don't really suck as much as I am going to show them I do.

My biggest stroke of luck was that 2 of our 3 main tanks were in the run as alts and one of them even was on a tank alt. My off-spec outgeared his pally alt tank so I got to main tank in ICC 10 as my first trial at endgame tanking. Talk about trial by fire. :) For just about 75% of the bosses I had to ask what I needed to do or keep an eye out for as a tank. More than once I was asked if I pay any attention in the raids, lol. My guildies talked me through them and I think we only wiped 2 times on 2 separate bosses in the first 10 bosses of the raid. Sindra we ended wiping on 3 times getting to phase 3 every time with the last wipe at 4% but it was getting late and a few of us had to leave so we called it.

All in all the tanking experience was a huge success for me and even being self critical I was better than most pug tanks I see when I was at my worst. Hell one of the main tanks was happy on vent because "we now have an extra backup tank".

Here are some fun notes I picked up when trying to wrap my head around being a tank vs being a dps.

1. Don't run out on blood princes when Taldaron does his explosion thingy. Everyone else runs away from you.
2. Hitting every button as fast as you can is 2nd or 3rd on the list of importance now behind placement of the boss(movement), and how close you are to dying(self healing and cool-downs).
3. Remember death grip is only for when you are in tank spec.
4. Standing still is preferred. My paranoia about moving out of fire and stuff as dps was kicking me all night, but I never had to because the bosses like to poop fire on dps and healers not the tank.
5. As dps the stress level is constant (push every button at the right time to be perfect and get high dps), as tank the stress level is spiky (stand there and do not much until you have to do a ton of stuff all at once)
6. Bosses asses are huge and always in the way of you seeing important stuff. Learning to swing the camera around and see whats going on is going to be an important skill to learn.

all in all I am super happy. Tanking is incredibly more different of a play-style than dps. So much so that it has made me re-invigorated to log on and play.

Cata, the death of the 25 man guild... or is it?

When Blizzard announced that they were changing the culture behind 10 man vs 25 man raids and making equal loot drop in both, my initial reaction was: goodbye 25 man raids. Any top end guild has to do bring at least 10% of the raid that is less than awesome. Hell some are just marginally better than an empty raid spot. If you can get the same loot from 10s that you can from 25s then why not just set up the best 10 players you have?

Well, news came out today to expand on Blizzard's thinking on raiding structure. And oh boy, its good news. Here it is via Wowhead (my comments in white)

10-Mans and 25-Mans

You guys already know that Blizzard is planning to consolidate 10-man and 25-man raiding into less of a difficulty setting and more of a playstyle choice. This means that 10-man and 25-man encounters will be designed to have roughly the same difficulty level, and will drop items from the same loot table. To compensate for the additional logistical hassle of getting 25 players online rather than 10, Blizzard will be giving out more loot per player in 25-mans—specifically, about 50% more. It was strongly hinted that this extra loot would come in the form of Emblems.

Even if you get more loot per player it still wont fix the problem of bringing your bottom of the barrel players. Lets say on a 10 man boss you get 2 pieces of loot. That's 1 piece of loot per person every 5 bosses (with perfect rng). If you get 50% more pieces of loot per person in a 25 man raid that's 7.5 pieces of loot per boss or 1 piece of loot every 1.66 bosses per person (with perfect rng)

7.5 pieces of loot per boss sounds much better than 2 pieces of loot per boss, but the real deciding factor is time. Having a 10 man that can down all the raids in 2 days every week is much, much better than trying to organize 25 man raids for 3 or 4 days and statistically not finishing them all every week.

What they hadn't announced previously is the ability to "downshift" your raid. Imagine if you do a 25-man run of a new instance, get about halfway through, and call it a night. The next day you get back together to do another run, but—big surprise—only 20 people show up. Well, now you can "downshift" your raid into two separate 10-man groups, and just keep right on going. The maximum number of 10-mans you can make out of one 25-man is three—meaning, if the remaining five guys show up the next day, they can swap down to a 10-man as well and keep right on going.

This is a minor solution that would still mean trying to salvage a bad situation of still having sub par players and filler players in the raid.

Raid Lockouts

Here's another big change—they've added a great deal of flexibility to raid lockouts. Rather than being locked into a particular raid ID, you can now join any raid, as long as it doesn't have any bosses up that you have already killed. Basically, as long as you're not killing the same boss twice in one lockout period—you have total freedom.

This is the big one. This is what will really save the 25 man guilds now. I foresee top end guilds running two 10 man raids. The current problem with the raid lockout system is that once you kill one boss you can't help anyone other than the group you went with. If your guild runs two 10s and get half the bosses down each then the next night 2 tanks and 3 healers don't log on both groups are screwed. If Morrogwar is the the weekly raid quest boss you can't ever get replacements because everyone forms a raid and kills him then leaves.

This structure solves all of this in one fell swoop. Guilds will run two 10 mans and when people don't show up they can mix and match according to who is on. They can even start the week out on 25s bringing more people on the days when there are 35 people on then downshift to 10s later in the week to finish off the raid with the 15 who always log on for the end of week raids.

I foresee this structure being a big win for Blizzard after the dust settles and the top guilds are running level 85 raids. At first there will be some stigma with completing the bosses on 10 man setting but as guilds mix and match and achieve success no one will care.

Enchanting and the 80/20 rule

In my 2 days off of raiding I managed to get mostly set up with my enchanting scroll business. I have spent about 2k gold on enchanting mats and made 2 of every scroll I know. Since there is no cost to post and cancel auctions for enchants the only cost is making the first batch of enchants. As long as the sale price is above the cost of mats plus AH sale cut I will make money on every one that sells.

My problem right now is that I cant post any because I don't have a good grasp on all the material prices. I need a week of scanning the AH because I haven't done so on this account for months. Once I get a baseline I will be able to set prices for sales.

This is the same strategy that I use with inscription. After my initial investment of making a batch of every glyph in the game I now only make replacements for the ones that sell.

Many people try to use the 80/20 rule. This is where 80% of your sales come from 20% of the type of product you sell. People try to find that 20% that sell the best and only compete on those. I don't do this. I make some of each glyph and even if I sell one a month its worth the cost of posting.

In enchanting and inscription I think the 80/20 rule is missing out on sales. With any other profession using the 80/20 rule is probably best. The reason is that every time you post and cancel you are losing a bigger percentage of your profits.

New post, YAY!

Sorry it has been so long since I posted last. Combination of laziness and real life stuff getting in the way has made me neglectful.

I have a few things going in the game right now. I am at 22 of 50 shards for my Shadowmourne. Since we are doing all hard modes minus Putricide, Sindragosa, and Lich King the drop rate is going real well. I am also working to break into the enchanting market. And finally we are seeing the onset of the expansion blues in the guild.

As for the expansion blues, its coming early for us because of may people hitting finals in school, and the world cup coming up means a low attendance month. After that we will see some people with beta invites I'm sure. Summer and actual info from the expansion will make even more people feel like taking a break.

Tonight not being a raid night I plan on fully automating my enchanting scroll business and running it like my glyph business. Posting once a day of every enchant I know. Expect a post on that in a few days.